How would you Promote Poser?

@krios Yes, but how would you SHOW that message? Although, after thinking about it, If someone were to ask me to design an ad with that message, I'd depict Poser as a Swiss army knife.

Maya and the like might be a Swiss army knife (modeling, animation, VFX), whereas Poser would be more like the carving knife @Ladonna mentioned--very good only at one thing: animation. And of course pictures as well, but that you can do the same exact way with just about any modern 3D program... even Second Life.

My "tool" analogy, is a very rough and direct personal opinion meant only for us. It would need to be refined because as Ero pointed out, it really means: Those who don't suck can create great things with Poser. Which is not fair to say, because not to "suck" at Poser (at least on a pro level) one would have to have an engineering level of understanding of Python, human anatomy, the inner workings of Poser, animation, lighting, scene composition, rendering... and many of the advanced things Ero and a handful of others talk about: JMCs, custom morphs, and don't get me started with the material room... mind boggling possibilities.

In other words, Poser is not meant to be a stand alone tool, just as much as it's not meant for a one-man-band. Except maybe for pictures, but Poser can be so much more than that. Imagine the pict Ero posted come to life.

So how do we show all this without scaring off the uninitiated amateurs, while attracting some pro level bums?
Do what Blender did: round up a handful of the best Poser specialists and create a short animation worthy of an Academy Award! How else can an animation program be advertised?

@adosity
Would be nice to have some case studies: here's what I've done, and here's how I've done it.
Not only would it show off Poser's capabilities and help spread the word, but would teach a few tricks to the Poser fanatics.

@krios I disagree. No Poser doesn't allow you to actually model, but it does allow you to animate, pose, and render As I've said else where, there are lots of things those three things allow you to do and cover several fields of endeavor. I know a lot of people like to use the old axiom the right tool for the right job. I like to think of Poser like McGyver's swiss army knife. Or Dr. Who's sonic screwdriver. That may not be what it was made for , but in the hands of the right person, it doesn't really matter.

@eclark1849
Animate, pose & render are still just one thing really: you have to pose a character (keyframes) to animate it, and then you have to render it for video editing. And in my book, that's a good thing! It's like having one favorite carving knife--one tool for one purpose. Ever tried carving something with a Swiss army knife that can also open a wine bottle? Ain't saying that it's not possible, heck you might even have a good grip on the oversized handle, but it simply does not compare to an actual carving knife.

But, if you wanna call Poser the Swiss army knife, what should we call Maya? A tool box? ;]

This is a concept I made before P11 came out, and I think the idea behind this might be interesting considering the question on how to promote Poser.

A little background (but perhaps relevant to this discussion too): Poser seems to have this 'reputation' among the more 'Elite' CGI artists, and what this rep is kind of depends who you ask. But generally its 'bad' or 'amateurish' or just plain pornware. Now we all know that's absolute BS but I can guess we all understand where that all comes from. Poser is one of those apps that has made CGI way more accessible to the layman, and not just because of its price compared to stuff like Maya, but also the UI and workflow and features. Its all pretty straight forward. Blender might be totally free, but its probably easier to learn to fly the Space Shuttle than to figure out Blender. So the bad rep could basically be elitists being annoyed that their art is now more accessible to less experienced folk, with all the amateur CGI that resulted from it, like how the traditional film photographers felt when digital photography became more popular (the accessibility, and threatening the art form).

Now I'm not in the world suggesting they should do this, but I entertained the idea for a bit and thought, if they were to ditch the name Poser (because of the rep) like they did with Manga Studio (Clip Studio Pro), what would be a better name then? Again, I'm not saying that they should do it, re-branding is very risky, and Poser is a fine name and honestly I couldn't give a crap about the reputation now, but the exercise did help me visualize better what I see Poser as being. Well, its actually a kind of mini hollywood, a stage. You get your actors, load your props, tell them to do stuff at certain times. Its virtual theater basically. You're a director.

Now you can also do this with Maya and Max and Blender of course, to varying degrees, but most of those apps also create content, do simulations, make very complex rigs. If you see how Poser is set up, it not really about creating content, is way more focused on actually bringing content to life, by manipulating it with poses, materials, or even the rigs. Its a podium, theater, a stage.

@erogenesis Great artwork Ero. That's one of the things about your renders that differs from most others that I se here. Your's look like they could have been taken with a camera. Not really talking about the render quality as much as the scene and staging.

@erogenesis I've always liked this image for it's lighting and that's when I dared to increase my sunlight to even 200% and it made a huge difference!

@Glitterati3D I think you're confusing the pink from the inner flap of the shoe as skin. If you look closely that same pink is at the bottom of the shoe and on the other foot as well although not as visible.

@morkonan The irony of your entire comments is that SM/Poser doesn't even exert quality control over it's own store.

How is it you think they should branch out of a branch they don't even function in?

I pointed out, I thought, that they need to exert quality control over their own store. They won't have the pressure to bear to exert it elsewhere until they've gained more of share, but they should consider learning from their own store experience and then working with resellers and vendors to set some minimum "guidelines" to at least ensure some level of base-acceptable quality.

Honestly, they should have a whole write-up on this with all of their recommendations for the most popular product types. They should offer a professional level "packer" program for vendors, either "free" when that person first offers a product for sale at their store or a low-price version available at their store. It should have templates for everything, including descriptions, instructions, and basic user licensing agreements.

But... no. Why? Because, the attitude is obviously "...nothing is important except the next release and we don't care about other monies..."

I'm being disingenuous, I know, and I'm sure they care. Probably. They're just not doing what I think a forward moving company with such a large exposure in this market should be doing. Or, for any company in any market, for that matter...

I'm sure they have their own concerns and I do not know what those are, so I'm not well-informed and all my opinions and suggestions mean jack-squat to them.

BUT, darnit, they're worth a heck of a lot more than SM is paying me to post them. :)

@morkonan That's crazy, though. You're asking a company to interfere in another's company's livelihood and not only is that silly in THIS market (from a company that exerts no quality control over it's own store) but in any market.

A comparison would be Microsoft exerting control over Nvidia because their cards go inside a MS based operating system.

@Deecey
Tja, the pro-and cons of a very active forum. Lots to read and follow up. LOL.

@ Tracy
Mmmm, the requirement to have obj files in a Geometry folder, and textures in a Texture folder ended some 10 years ago.
Most, myself included like to have obj, cr2, and textures together.

Some content sites still have this old (and dare I say obsolete) requirement, but Poser moved on to a more open structure, and it's better this way.

Now you can grab a USB stick, copy you clothing, building or prop in a single go, and move to the next PC without having to wade and search to find all the files in all different subfolders.

At the time, it was one of the big improvement to let go of this subfolder system.

And:
if Poser is searching for a certain file? It always starts in its native folder where the item is loaded from anyway.
Only then does it move downwards to the subfolders like Geometries, Textures and so on. => Speed improvement gained also.

@krios Don't care what you call Maya, I don't own it, or use it, and I'm not interested in promoting it.

Rest assured Earl I ain't promoting anything over Poser, but we do have to be open minded and realize that as professional Poser artists we need to have and master other tools in our tool box for things like modeling and VFX: Maya, Blender, Cinema 4D... ect.
Personally, I use Maya for all my modeling needs, and must outsource VFX coz it's too much to learn that on top of animation.

Soooo... back to promoting Poser...

As we all know, Poser is a specialty tool, specializing in animation. Maya, Blender, Max, might be an all-in-one package, but it also requires a steep learning curve as Ero pointed out. So the promotion would have to revolve around the ease of use for animation which is an extremely complex skill to master, without having to worry about the software's GUI and 1000's of options as well.

This is where Poser shines: simple software = ease of use = fast production!
Get this point across in a promotional campaign and you might have a leg to stand on.